Land Grab, Food Security and Climate Change: A Vicious Circle in the Global South

Abstract

The commercialization of public land in the Gl obal South, which refers to the medium and low human development based on the United Nations development program report 2005 [1], has increased dramatically in recent year s due to the wide spread leasing and sale of land to foreign companies and governments. The main goal of these investors is to secure food and energy production for their population s as multiple factors threaten their food security at home. On the one hand, the curre nt population will increase worldwide from nearly 7 billion to over 9 billion by 2050 [2], a growth that would require the increase of food production from nearly 6 billion tons (gross ) to 9 billion tons by 2050 [3]. Furthermore, competition for land, water, and energy will only intensify along with the need to reduce the many negative impacts of agriculture to th e environment [4, 5]. Global food security has been further strained, notably during 2007-08 [6 ], by the growing volatility of the food market and the political controve rsy surrounding the use of grain to produce biofuels [7, 8]. Any one of these factors will likely pose signif icant challenges, but the sum of all of them could constitute a major threat to land ownership. \rDue to the increasing global demand for f ood-stuffs production and alternative energy development, the southern hemisphere is portra yed as an idoneous reservoir of arable land capable of satisfying the international need s, a particular example constitute African countries due to their relatively low population density [9] and cheap land. As mentioned in De Shutter (2009) southern countries in Africa and Latin America ar e the main targets for investors seeking farmland as it is scarce in Asia [14]. This race to buy land has been described by many as a new neo-colonial approa ch by wealthy countries to take over the key natural resources of poor countries [15]. Some analysts perceive these land deals as a threat to the livelihood of local communities while others stress the positive effects derived from the income generated in these deals [9]. Such benefits could be perceived as the injection of the much-needed capital to sustain agriculture [16] and ther efore the creation of on-farm and off-farm jobs, the development of rural infrastructure such as irrigation canals, and the construction of schools and health cl inics that will improve local livelihoods. Along this line of thought, many of th e host countries of land deals have encouraged this type of investment and are keen to develop it as a potentially lucrative activity